Bitcoin's 23% Rally Sent Beaten-Down Miners Past the AI Stocks

Bitcoin's August rally has revived the mining sector's most beaten-down stocks, reversing a trend that had rewarded miners pivoting toward AI and high-performance computing.

In its Miner Weekly newsletter, BlocksBridge Consulting reported that bitcoin's roughly 23% gain over the past week outpaced most AI-linked infrastructure stocks.

The spread

Canaan, American Bitcoin and Cango gained between 41% and 67%. Over the same stretch CoreWeave rose about 21%, Nebius 17% and IREN 15%, while several miners with heavier AI and HPC exposure were flat or down.

That inversion is the story. For most of the past two years the market has paid a premium for miners repurposing their power contracts and data centre shells into AI compute, and discounted those still simply mining bitcoin.

What drove the underlying move

BlocksBridge pointed to several catalysts, beginning with the US Treasury's 19 August announcement that it would at least double its liquidity-support buybacks of longer-dated Treasury securities.

The pattern is a reminder of what these equities are. A miner that diversifies into AI becomes a partially hedged infrastructure business with contracted revenue. A miner that does not remains a leveraged bet on the bitcoin price — which underperforms badly when the price falls and does exactly this when it rises 23% in a week.